A few years ago, someone asked me whether I lived in my neighbourhood, or if I just slept there. I thought it was a brilliant question that offered so much in so few words.
Relationship to place is one of the most frequent themes of my work. In particular, the relationship between technological systems and the local places and people that they impact. So far, I have found it productive to keep asking about how to bring more place-based thinking into how we talk about technology, how we design and build it, how we buy it, how we use it, and how we govern it.
There is lots of room to be creative in procurement. But you have to stand still for long enough to understand, deeply, where you’re starting from with your systems. And be comfortable in that knowledge. Familiar, even.
I saw a little glimmer of relatedness in this great interview in ROOM Magazine with the writer Ursula K Le Guin. I enjoyed this bit in particular about rootedness and stability and creativity, but the whole thing is excellent:
“ROOM: Do you feel that your rootedness has any correlation to your output? Does stability have any correlation to creativity?
UKLG: It does for me. It gives me time and room to write, a fixed space in which my imagination can just move out wherever it wants to. Whereas usually the only writing I do when I’m travelling is just a descriptive journal, because I’m busy describing the place where I am now. If I had to do that all the time I probably wouldn’t write fiction.”
I’m thinking about whether we live in our technologies, or if we just sleep there.
alt: photograph of bright red sour cherries in pale blue fruit boxes
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